The Thirteenth Tribe
by Meshakhad
Summary: The Fleet detects a signal from the Thirteenth Tribe, and sets a new course, only to discover a new terror on a planet called 'Miranda'...
1. The Signal

"Jump complete, Commander," Lieutenant Gaeta announced, as the slight feeling of nausea subsided in Commander William Adama's stomach.

"All ships reporting in, sir," Dualla reported. "No Dradis contacts... scratch my last! We have a faint radio source, bearing two-five-one carom oh-niner-three!"

The fading tension of the FTL jump was replaced with a spike of adrenaline.

"Distance?" Adama asked, his voice clipped and forceful.

"Unknown, sir," Dualla replied. "All Dradis dishes reporting the same heading. It's distant, sir."

The adrenaline faded. At least they hadn't dropped into a Cylon ambush.

"Contact the rest of the fleet," Adama ordered. "Try to localize the signal."

"Aye, sir," she nodded. Several seconds passed, which Adama spent staring at the Dradis display. The signal was a single red dot, with a question mark floating next to it.

"Commander, eight ships confirm the same origin for the signal. All others are unable to localize it at all."

"Mr. Gaeta?" Adama asked, his voice calm now.

"Sir, if all of our ships are reporting an identical heading, then the signal has to originate outside this star system," the lieutenant replied. He bent over his own console. "There's a lot of hash in the signal."

"Supernova remnant?" Tigh pondered.

"For all we know, it could be Earth," Adama muttered.

Dualla spoke up. "Commander, we have a com request from Colonial One. It's the President."

"Put her through." Adama lifted the headset to his ear. "Madam President?"

"Commander, I was told we had detected a radio signal?" Roslin's voice was very composed, with just an edge of concern.

"That's correct, Madam President," he replied. "We haven't been able to localize it, so it's probably from outside the system. Most of our ships don't have sufficient Dradis capacity to even pinpoint it."

"I see." He heard Dr. Baltar talking in the background, then speaking closer to the pickup.

"Commander, I suggest you deploy Raptors some distance from the fleet - over one hundred million kilometers - in order to triangulate a fix. That should be sufficient."

"What makes you think that will work, Doctor?" Adama asked. The concept sounded vaguely familiar...

"It's how astronomers back in the colonies determined the distance to the stars. They'd use results from observatories on different planets, preferably as far apart as possible."

Ah! That was it.

"Where did you learn that fact, Doctor?" he heard Roslin ask.

"I've been a faithful subscriber to Modern Science since I was eleven, Madam President."

Adama chuckled. He imagined Gaeta could have suggested the same thing, but it wouldn't have come with the mental image of a young Baltar reading science magazines.

"Mr. Gaeta," he lifted his head away from the headset, "deploy three Raptors. They are to each jump one hundred million kilometers from the fleet on bearings perpendicular to the signal, in order to triangulate its location."

-

An hour later, the Commander, Colonel Tigh, Lieutenant Gaeta, President Roslin, Dr. Baltar, Starbuck, and Apollo were gathered in the briefing room. Adama tried to always think of his son as "Apollo" while on duty. Thinking of him as "Lee" clouded his judgement, and "Captain Adama" didn't do much better.

"Thanks to the information from our Raptors," Gaeta said as he spread out an overlay on the table, "we've been able to localize the source of the radio emissions to this star cluster, seventy-three light-years away."

"Is it natural in origin?" Roslin asked, one hand resting under her chin.

Gaeta shook his head. "Unlikely, Madam President. The signals don't match any known natural phenomenon. While they're too faint and garbled to have even a hope of understanding them, the most likely explanation is that they are artificial in nature. They are similar in nature to the signals we were picking up when we were several light-years out from the Colonies."

"So we're not talking about an abandoned beacon or something?" Tigh inquired.

"No, Colonel. These are consistent with an advanced civilization. In fact, it appears that they are coming from several different star systems. We've identified at least eight stars which appear to be giving off signals."

The room was silent for a moment. The notion had crossed Adama's mind almost immediately, but now it was all but confirmed. Someone was out there.

"It could be the Thirteenth Tribe," Starbuck suggested. "Maybe after they found Earth, they colonized the nearby systems as well."

"It could also be the Cylons," Apollo countered.

Roslin raised an eyebrow. "The Cylons?"

"Impossible," Tigh growled.

"But we've never found their homeworld," Apollo pointed out.

This was true. The Fleet had launched several covert expeditions to locate the Cylon homeworld, with no success.

"Lee, the signal is coming from seventy-three light-years away," Starbuck reminded him.

"So?"

"So it originated seventy-three years ago. The Cylons weren't even invented yet."

Lee blushed. "Right."

"It also rules out any Colonial source," Adama continued. "Leaving either the Thirteenth Tribe..."

Starbuck shrugged. "Or aliens."

Roslin crossed her arms. "The Thirteenth Tribe is the most likely possibility. And this indicates that not only are they out there, but they have resources comparable to the Twelve Colonies. Possibly more."

"You think we should set a course?" Adama inquired. He'd been expecting this.

"I do," Roslin nodded.

"I agree."

Roslin gave him a smile.

"Any objections?" Adama looked around the room.

Nobody objected.

"It'll take us about a month to reach the cluster," Gaeta sighed. "I'll start calculating jumps."

TWO MONTHS LATER

Once more, Adama, Roslin, Tigh, Gaeta, Baltar, Starbuck, and Apollo gathered in the briefing room.

The news that the fleet had detected a signal from what everyone presumed was Earth had been an incredible boost to morale. Overall, things had just gone better. And they seemed to have escaped the Cylons - there hadn't been a single encounter since the failed logic bomb. Speculation was divided between the Cylons having been crippled by their losses when Sharon Valerii turned the logic bomb against them and the Cylons having picked up the signals from Earth and not wanting to face a presumably hostile Thirteenth Tribe.

Recently, however, a sense of unease had crept in. Despite coming closer, they had still been unable to decipher any coherent signals from the "Earth Cluster" as everyone was calling it. The most powerful signals were either Dradis emissions or encoded. Gaeta and Baltar had come up with perfectly logical reasons for that, and Baltar had spent two hours on talk wireless explaining them, but it still put people on edge. Half-jokes about aliens had become more common, enough that Adama had quietly reviewed the old first contact protocols.

Now, the map showed their best mapping of the Earth Cluster. It consisted of five star systems (designated Alpha through Epsilon), each of which had multiple planets and at least one companion star apiece. All were clustered fairly close together.

"I think," Roslin took a deep breath, "that it would be unwise to jump directly to any planet of Alpha Prime." Alpha Prime was the central star. "If we suddenly appeared in orbit over their capital world, they might react violently."

Dr. Baltar nodded. "I agree, Madam President. We should choose a planet in one of the outer systems, on the periphery."

Starbuck scanned the map. She extended her arm, and hesitantly pointed a finger. "Here. Delta-Bravo."

Adama considered it. Delta-Bravo was a curiosity. When they'd been fifteen light-years out, they'd picked up a lot of transmissions from it. But when they got within ten light-years, the transmissions had dropped to almost nothing. Something had happened there.

It was also the nearest star to the Fleet's current position.

"Why Delta-Bravo?" Baltar asked, tilting his head to one side.

"Well," Starbuck withdrew her hand, "judging by the level of radio transmissions, it's likely the least-populated system. The transmissions could even be from unmanned monitoring stations. Maybe they tried to colonize it, and something went wrong."

That was the dominant theory.

"If something went wrong there, shouldn't we avoid it?" Tigh inquired in his usual semi-growl.

"It could have failed for any number of reasons," Apollo countered. "The planetary environment could be unstable. The magnetic field could have failed. For that matter, maybe the colony just wasn't profitable, so they gave up and went home."

"So as long as we stay in orbit, we should be safe?" Gaeta asked, his tone that of a man confirming his thoughts.

Starbuck nodded. "And if it's an abandoned colony, they'll be less likely to see us as a threat."

"We'll do a survey from orbit," Adama decided. "Then, if conditions on the surface aren't too hostile, we'll send down Raptors."

"Agreed," Roslin folded her arms in decision.

As Raptor 1 flew over snow-capped mountains, Helo felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He'd expected the planet - still designated Delta-Bravo I - to be a barren wasteland or something. Instead, it was gorgeous. Thousands of square kilometers of pristine wilderness. Oceans, forests, mountains, marshes, open plains... it had everything. It was definitely on the cool side, mind you. Most of the planet's land area was taiga, tundra, or ice sheets. But it was still a lovely planet, under a bright blue sun.

So where were the people?

Up ahead lay the city he'd been sent to investigate. It was pretty big. The architecture was different from Colonial styles, more flowing. But he could discern no movement. No spacecraft taking off or landing. No cars or trams or people just walking.

They couldn't have just abandoned this because it was unprofitable. Yet the atmospheric scans hadn't picked up anything. No toxins, no pathogens, nominal levels of radiation.

"How's that beacon looking?" Starbuck called back. She'd volunteered to be his pilot for this mission. They were closing in on a faint signal coming from the city. It was the only transmission from the planet that could be detected from orbit. The rest of the signals had been coming from the debris field that apparently surrounded Delta-Bravo. Gaeta was still trying to decipher them, but to Helo, they hadn't sounded like static.

They'd sounded like screams.

"Getting stronger," he replied. "Adjust heading, eight caroms to starboard."

As they got closer, Helo began to discern what looked like people in the streets. Only they weren't moving. He rechecked the seal on his helmet, then noticed Starbuck doing the same.

There were hundreds of bodies in the streets. Most were badly decayed. It reminded him of Caprica. Maybe someone had dropped a neutron bomb?

"Lords of Kobol," Starbuck whispered. "Galactica, Starbuck, we are in sight of the city."

 _"Copy that, Starbuck,"_ Dee came back. _"What do you see?"_

"Hundreds dead," Starbuck replied. "Still no sign of radiation or toxins."

 _"Keep your suits sealed,"_ Dee advised. _"Proceed to the signal. Galactica out."_

The signal led them to a crashed shuttle near an intersection. Starbuck set the Raptor down smoothly, and the two of them stepped out. As they did, Helo noticed that while most of the writing he could see was in ordinary Caprican - they were at the intersection of 12th Avenue and 10th Street - some was in a language he didn't recognize. Evidently, the Thirteenth Tribe had seen linguistic variations like the other tribes.

The shuttle had seen better days. Reserve power was still on, but much of the equipment had been smashed, and he thought he saw bloodstains. This was starting to feel like a horror movie.

In the center of the room stood a console of some sort. On top was a transparent plastic disc that was clearly meant to mate with the console. Curiously, Helo rotated it into place. When he did, two metal hinges swung up to hold it in place, and the whole apparatus glowed blue.

A hologram appeared above the console. The technology was well in advance of anything the Colonies had. The hologram was of a young woman in a blue uniform. As she spoke, images similar to what they'd seen hovered in front of her.

 _"These are just a few of the images we've recorded, and you can see... it isn't what we thought. There's been no war here, and no terraforming event. The environment is stable."_ She sniffled. _"It's the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression."_ She began to sob. _"Well it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped... everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's 30 million people here, and they all just let themselves die."_

Helo's jaw had dropped. Thirty million? It wasn't the death toll from the Colonies, but it was hundreds of times the entire population of the Fleet. And they hadn't died in a war. It had just been some social experiment gone horribly wrong.

A snarling sound came from offscreen, and the woman's head snapped to the right before centering. _"I have to be quick,"_ she said in a small, terrified voice. She tried to compose herself before continuing. _"About a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased beyond madness."_ More snarls and crashing sounds came from offscreen. _"They have become... well they've killed most of us. And not just killed..."_ her voice broke again, _"...they've done things."_

Helo saw that Starbuck's eyes were the size of dinner plates. His were probably just as big.

 _"I won't live to report this,"_ the woman sobbed, as the snarling grew louder, _"but people have to know. We meant it for the best, to make people safer."_ Another snarl, this one even closer. _"God!"_ The woman drew a pistol, firing it to the right. Then, she put it to her head, before a - was that a person? - something tackled her and pulled her down, from out of view. She screamed and screamed and screamed until Starbuck turned off the recording.

Helo felt like throwing up. Somehow, he'd gotten used to the notion that the Cylons had murdered billions of his species. They (with the obvious exception of Sharon) had become the epitome of evil. But their evil was a cold, calculating, impersonal sort of evil. This... this was something different. Savage. Brutal. Animalistic.

What had the gods led them to?


	2. The Message

Bringing the recording back to _Galactica_ had proven to be harder than it sounded. The Colonies had experimented with holographic technology, but this was far beyond their capabilities. Fortunately, the holoprojector had been relatively easy to load onto the Raptor, and it had taken Cally all of thirty minutes to whip up a transformer.

Now, Roslin, Baltar, and _Galactica_ 's senior officers stared at the holoprojector, digesting what they had just seen. Gaeta looked a little green. Baltar was wide-eyed. Even Kara was still shocked, and she'd seen the recording before.

"I think this rules out settlement on the planet," Roslin said. "We can't risk exposing ourselves to this Pax."

"I don't think that is a danger, Madam President," Baltar responded. "Whatever this is, it has to be a very complex chemical compound. I've gone over the atmospheric samples, and I can't detect any such compound. Most likely, it's non-persistent."

"You're risking a lot on a 'most likely'," Tigh growled.

"Well, there's a way to find out." Baltar raised a finger. "She mentioned some sort of air processors the Thirteenth Tribe used to spread the Pax. If we can find them, we can probably find any remaning stocks of the Pax itself. Once we do, we can confirm if there is any left in the planet's atmosphere."

"We could also try to find any archives or computer records that could tell us more about the Thirteenth Tribe," Lee suggested. "Even if we don't settle the planet, it's a jackpot of spare parts and other resources."

"What about the people with the heightened aggressor response?" Roslin asked. This question was directed at Adama. "Might they be the source of the signals we've picked up?" Which had turned out to be screams after all.

Adama nodded. "That's very likely. Our telescopes have confirmed the presence of ships in the debris field surrounding Delta-Bravo. But there's no indication they've noticed us. We're flying the usual CAP, so if these... Agressors... do come for us, we'll be as ready as we can be."

Roslin brushed her hand across her chin. Then she took a deep breath. "Alright. We'll stay here for now. But until we find more information, we will make no attempt to contact the Thirteenth Tribe. Any government that could do this sort of thing to its own people is not a government I am willing to trust."

* * *

After the meeting broke up, Kara trudged out of the briefing room, her head down. She was not surprised to hear Lee coming from behind.

"Where are you going?" Lee asked. His voice combined concern with mild annoyance.

Kara turned on him. "To find a really stiff drink," she answered. "After all I saw today, I think I deserve one."

Lee held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Hey, I was just asking. You're probably right, anyway." He brought his hands down, then placed them on his hips. "Any chance I could join in on that drink?"

Ten minutes later, they were in Starbuck's quarters, sharing a jar of Chief Tyrol's moonshine.

"I mean, I never expected the Thirteenth Tribe to be saints or anything," Kara leaned back. "But right now, the only thing we know about them is that they tried using chemicals to calm their population. How frakked up is that?"

"Well, that's not all we know," Lee pointed out. "We know they inhabit multiple star systems. We know they speak at least two languages. We know their technology is more advanced than ours. We know their SAR teams wear blue uniforms." He took another swig. "Besides, this all went down ten years ago, right? Maybe they had a big public scandal, their version of the Quorum did a big inquiry, and everybody involved went to jail."

"Maybe," Kara sighed. "It's just... things seemed to be going well over the past month. We built the Blackbird, we stopped the logic bomb, we found the signal, we haven't seen a hint of the Cylons..."

She took another drink. Lee did the same. "Out of the frying pan, into the fire," he mused as he set the jar down. "Oh, one other thing we know about them!"

Kara raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"

"Some of their SAR people are pretty good-looking."

For a moment, Kara was tempted to throw the jar at him... only for Lee to look at her and smile. "But nowhere near as good-looking as our Viper pilots."

If she'd been sober, or if they'd been in the break room, Kara would have simply laughed. She was still trying to sort out her feelings for Lee and Sam. But they were alone, she was drunk, and Lee was right.

An hour later, she was asleep in his arms.

* * *

As the Colonial Fleet debated the settlement of the planet below them, they were being observed.

Not by the Alliance. While there had been remote monitoring satellites emplaced by the Alliance, every single one had been destroyed or stripped for parts. No ship had been sent to replace them, not only due to the Reaver threat, but in order to maintain the secret of Miranda's past.

However, the Reavers themselves did notice the arrival of the Colonial Fleet. It took a few hours for the radio signals emitted by the Fleet to reach the roughly spherical cloud of debris inhabited by the Reavers. Many Reaver ships failed to detect the signals at all due to shoddy equipment. More detected the signals, but did not notice them, as no one happened to be monitoring sensors, the crew being engaged in various unseemly activities. But those that did have someone monitoring sensors saw the unmistakeable signatures of powerful search radar.

Reavers are not constantly raging beasts. If they were, they would be unable to work together, let alone operate starships. They are intelligent enough to recognize when a target is too dangerous, and they knew that they were looking not at a single ship, but a fleet. They were also intelligent enough to figure out that any ship with extremely powerful search radar (such as the _Battlestar Galactica_ ) was likely to be sufficiently well-armed to pose a serious threat. So most of the Reavers who did detect the Fleet chose to rule it out as a viable target.

But Reavers are not men. They are best understood as animals, gifted with human intelligence but still driven by animal urges. They can only hold those urges in check for so long. And for one Reaver ship in particular, it had been too long since they had found prey. That ship, once a mining vessel flagged to Gavaji Extraction Industries, fired up its engines, and set a course for Miranda.


	3. Bogey One

DELTA-BRAVO I

Cally was normally quite comfortable in a spacesuit. Not only was she trained for EVA, but it came her way more often than most of _Galactica_ 's crew. She'd never been vacuum-phobic, never had shortness of breath or the obsessive need to check her suit's telltales before.

But stepping out onto the surface of Delta-Bravo I, she felt on edge. Intellectually, she knew that she was probably far safer down here than she was doing EVA. If her suit breached, she wouldn't be at risk of death from depressurization. The only thing she had to worry about was a chemical compound that almost certainly wasn't present anymore, and even if it was, it would probably take months of exposure before she either let herself starve to death or went crazy and tried to kill everyone.

Still, one of the top items on their list of priorities was finding those air processors. Also on the list was any information about the Thirteenth Tribe and the planet. All of which meant that computers or other records were the goal.

"Ma'am, where do you want to go?" the Chief asked Starbuck as the ground team stepped out of the Raptor.

Starbuck scanned the plaza they'd landed in, keeping her rifle level. A second Raptor was disgorging Marines. There might be Aggressors on the planet, which was also something Cally had to worry about. And they couldn't rule out the possibility of attack by some alien predator with big teeth, sharp claws, and an appetite for Viper mechanics.

"We'll start with that building," Starbuck pointed to a four-story structure of steel and glass at the north of the plaza, "and work our way clockwise."

The Marines stacked up on either side of the door before trying to open it, which proved rather easy. After they swarmed inside and called "Clear!" Starbuck and the rest of the team followed.

The moment she stepped inside, Cally knew exactly what this was, and she felt better. It was something familiar: wooden tables in booths upholstered with dark red leather. There were salt and pepper shakers, glass candleholders, and even bottles of condiments set up, although Cally was fairly sure they were spoiled.

"Looks like a really fancy restaurant," Helo drawled. "We must have landed in the good part of town."

"And it won't have computers," grumbled the Chief.

"Wait a moment!" a Marine called out. Cally saw him slowly moving towards another room, rifle pointed forward. "Looks like a hotel lobby!"

That perked everyone up. A hotel might have computer terminals for guests to use.

"Cally!" the Chief called. "Get the transformer and the generator!"

Cally smiled to herself as she obeyed.

* * *

Commander Adama listened in on the reports coming from the surface party. So far, things were going well. He restrained the urge to ask too many questions or give additional instructions. Part of command was learning how to delegate, and that meant letting your subordinates do their jobs without micromanaging them. Not only had he had too many superiors who seemed ignorant of that principle, but this mission had special importance. He'd put Starbuck in command of the surface party not only because she'd asked for it, but because he wanted to see how she would function in an extended command assignment.

The arrival at Delta-Bravo had forced him to think beyond tomorrow. In his personal opinion, the Fleet would probably settle the planet. And that would change his role from commanding a single Battlestar escorting a fleet of civilian ships to commanding the defense of an inhabited planet, as well as the de facto Secretary of Defense.

Once the civilians began to abandon their ships, he would probably put some of them under military control, particularly the ones that were already armed. That would allow him to deploy some of his forces away from the planet without leaving it unprotected. He could probably use some of their existing permanent crews, but he'd want some of his own officers in charge of planetary defense. Those officers whom he transferred out would need to be replaced. Which meant he needed to test out his other officers.

He scanned CIC, considering future roles for his people. Tigh was a good man, but his performance as acting CO after the shooting had been... suboptimal. Adama's instinct was to retain him as XO for now, or maybe put him in charge of the military academy they'd need to set up.

Apollo was the logical choice for detached command. Adama had full confidence in his son's abilities. He'd performed admirably as CAG. He would probably get the planetary defense command. Adama would give him Gaeta for his number two and commission Dualla to take Gaeta's place on _Galactica_...

His train of thought was derailed when the Dradis alarm went off.

"Dradis contact!" Dualla called out. "Unknown vessel at extreme range, inbound on our position!"

Adama's eyes snapped to the Dradis screen. It showed an unknown contact at the edge of their range. "What do you make of it?"

Dualla sighed. "There's little to go on, sir, although we've never seen the Cylons jump in this far off."

"Action stations!" Adama ordered. "Order the fleet to perpare for emergency jump to Point Blizzard, and launch the alert fighters." That was a point near close enough to Delta Bravo itself that the solar emissions would wash out any signals from the Fleet. Point Hurricane were well away from the Earth Cluster, and would be used in case the Thirteenth Tribe proved hostile. Point Firestorm was in orbit of Alpha Prime III, a major radio source and quite possibly Earth itself. That was a last-resort contingency in case of a major Cylon attack, the intention being to draw the Thirteenth Tribe's own fleet into the fight.

Gaeta's voice sounded from the speakers. _"Action stations, action stations. Set Condition One throughout the ship. Action stations, action stations..."_

"Sir, I'm picking up Dradis emissions from the contact," Dualla announced. "No match to known Cylon or Colonial signatures."

"Time to intercept?" Tigh asked.

"Twelve minutes for our fighters to intercept target. Fifteen minutes for target to intercept the Fleet."

That was fast. Adama couldn't completely rule out that it was a ship from the Thirteenth Tribe come to investigate who had shown up at the abandoned planet, but it was looking rather suspicious.

"Open a channel to the incoming ship," he ordered, and picked up the handset.

"Unknown ship, this is Commander William Adama of the _Battlestar Galactica_. Please identify yourselves."

There was no reply. Adama was still hesitant to open fire without provocation...

A new alert squealed, and Adama's blood chilled.

"Radiological alarm!" Dualla shouted. "Commander, that ship's carrying a heavy nuclear payload!"

That settled it.

"Order fleet to execute jump," Adama said evenly, suppressing the internal tremor of fear. "Lieutenant Gaeta, stand by to execute jump on my orders."

Tigh stared at him, clearly surprised Adama hadn't ordered _Galactica_ to jump immediately.

"We can't uncover the surface teams," Adama explained. "But if that thing launches missiles or gets past the fighters, we'll jump."

* * *

Captain Lee Adama was nervous. It was one thing to fight Cylons - he'd done that over 300 times now, if you counted each of the brief engagements while the Cylons were harrying the Fleet just after escaping the Colonies separately. It was another to engage an enemy he knew almost nothing about. And what he did know made it worse.

It wasn't the nuclear weapons that worried him. Cylons had nukes - _Galactica_ had taken a hit during its first battle. For that matter, _Galactica_ herself had five remaining nuclear warheads. Nukes were dangerous, but they were a known quantity. What worried him most was that all signs pointed to the Thirteenth Tribe being more advanced than the Colonies. What capabilities might this ship have? Laser weapons that would unerringly blast his Vipers out of the sky? Advanced armor plating that would laugh off his attacks? Some kind of energy field that disrupted FTL jumps?

The only good news was that detecting Bogey One well out had given him time to set up a better defense than "throw everything at it at once". Bogey One had a lot of velocity, but its acceleration curve was actually pretty anemic. Apollo and the Combat Air Patrol would fly out at high speed, fire a few rounds, get behind the bogey, then turn and burn like mad to catch up. Hot Dog had the alert fighters on a direct intercept. And Kat was in the Blackbird, and would be coming in at a different angle with missiles.

As he got closer, his wireless crackled. _"Flight Leader, Raptor Three."_

"Raptor Three, Flight Leader here," he replied. Raptor Three was flying alongside the CAP.

 _"Apollo, something is up here. I'm picking up a lot of radiation. More than a payload of nukes can explain."_

While the news that the ship might not be carrying nukes was welcome, anything giving off a lot of radiation was still something to be concerned with.

"What could it be?"

 _"I don't know,"_ Crashdown replied. _"Transferring data to_ Galactica _."_

" _Galactica_ , Flight Leader," Apollo said. "Do you see what we're seeing?"

 _"Lieutenant Gaeta here,"_ came the reply. _"I'm picking up a lot of alpha and beta particles... Lords of Kobol! Flight Leader, that ship is powered by an unshielded nuclear reactor! Say again, Bogey One has an unshielded nuclear reactor!"_

Apollo's eyes widened. Nuclear reactors weren't commonly used by Colonial ships, given the efficiency of tylium and the problem of nuclear waste. "Are you sure, Lieutenant?"

"Even basic shielding or armor will block alpha particles."

Apollo took a deep breath. He needed to reconsider his tactics, and quickly.

While the reactor could easily be the sole source of radiation, he couldn't rule out the possibility that the ship also had nuclear missiles. And given what they knew about the Aggressors, he needed to consider the possibility of a suicide run against _Galactica_...

Wait a moment.

"Lieutenant Gaeta, what did you say about armor?"

 _"Uh, any metallic armor would block most of those alpha particles."_

In other words, the ship likely didn't have much in the way of armor.

The ship was getting closer, enough that Apollo could make out its shape in the light of Delta-Bravo. It didn't exactly look like a warship. Maybe a converted civilian design?

One minute to intercept. Time to move.

"Flight One, Leader, begin deceleration," he announced even as he turned his Viper around and began decelerating relative to _Galactica_ \- which was another way of saying he was accelerating relative to Bogey One. He saw the other Vipers follow suite. "On my mark, engage Bogey One."

Thirty seconds later, he almost shouted "Mark!"

The Viper took only a second to turn around. The second his guns were facing Bogey One, he opened fire. Even as he did, he took in what he saw. The two-pronged hull design. The red paint job. The jagged metal spikes.

The bodies lashed to the hull.

The ship was bigger than a Cylon Heavy Raider, but was clearly unarmored. Under fire from half a dozen Vipers, its hull buckled, then shattered. For a brief moment, Apollo saw what might be the reactor through an opening. He sent a burst into it, and he saw sparks and metal shattering.

The ship seemed tough enough to survive Flight One's brief initial pass. But it was no longer accelerating. The Vipers caught up with it quickly enough. Then Hot Dog and Flight Two chewed it into a wreck, and Kat finished it off.

The engagement was over. Not a single Viper had so much as been damaged, let alone destroyed. But the nature of the attack disturbed Apollo. Sure, they had won.

But what the frak had they fought?

* * *

Laura Roslin wished she hadn't just had lunch before coming over to _Galactica_.

The guncam footage from the battle with the Aggressor ship was grisly. Especially when each frame was separated out so you could take your time to actually look at the images. At the charred skeletons, one of which might have been a child. It was like something out of a horror movie.

Even worse was the one body they'd been able to recover. His face had been mutilated beyond repair, and he'd had metal claws embedded in his forearm. Dr. Cottle's report stated that his injuries were likely self-inflicted.

Finally, she pushed the photos away and turned to Adama. "Commander, what is your opinion of our current strategic situation?"

Adama set down a photo and looked her in the eye. One of the many things she liked about him was his directness. "Madam President, if this is all we have to worry about, I'm quite confident we can fend off the Aggressors almost indefinitely. We have a long way to go before we run out of tylium or ammunition."

"Unfortunately, I think this may have been a probing attack. If these Aggressors are at all organized, they may respond by sending larger waves. If they have any larger ships, they might use those."

Roslin leaned forward. "You seem confident that they will attack again. Given that this attack inflicted no damage at all, might they decide to avoid us?"

Apollo cut in. "Madam President, it's possible, but unlikely. From the behavior of the ship, and from what we learned from the recording Starbuck found, the Aggressors are not rational beings at all. While we don't have a lot to go on, it looks like the ship we destroyed had no armament at all - it never fired on us. My guess is that it was on a suicide run. We should assume that they will continue to attack us regardless of their own losses."

Roslin inhaled and braced herself for a major demand. "Commander, do you have a proposal to address our situation here?"

Adama nodded. "Madam President, there are two courses of action open to us. Simply put, we can either leave, or we can stay. If we leave, we would have to establish direct contact with the Thirteenth Tribe and ask for sanctuary on one of their planets. At that point, we would be under the protection of their own military, which I must assume has the capacity to defend their worlds."

"If we stay, then we should commit to colonizing Delta-Bravo I. Moving even some of the civilians to the surface would allow us to reallocate some of the ships to defense, particularly those that are already armed. If there are any salvageable manufacturing facilities on the planet, we might be able to use those to produce new weapons and equipment. And if we no longer have to rely solely on the _Galactica_ for defense, then we could use the _Galactica_ to launch raids on the Aggressors - cut down their numbers before they threaten us here."

It wasn't much of a surprise. The debate had been going on in various forms ever since their arrival at Delta-Bravo. She also noticed that Adama did not mention the option of simply giving up on all of this and heading back out to face the Cylons. The Aggressors might be scary, but they were far better than the Cylons.

Roslin took another deep breath.

"I understand what you're saying, Commander, and it makes sense. Unfortunately, we do not have enough information yet to make a decision. For now, we'll wait until we get records from the surface. But in the meantime, we can lay the groundwork for your defense plan. Contact the captains of all armed ships in the Fleet, and we'll invite them -"

Roslin was cut off when a wall phone rang. Adama stepped over and answered it. After a few moments, he hung it up.

"The ground team just returned."

Roslin, Baltar, Apollo, and Billy all got up and headed out the hatch after Adama. He led them down to the port hangar, where a single Raptor rested on the deck.

Kara Thrace was the first out. Her expression was grim. She saluted Commander Adama, then handed Roslin a heavy book.

The title read "The History of Earth-That-Was".


End file.
